COREL's Acquisition of Ulead

[Jerry Jones]

COREL is going to be a POWERHOUSE multimedia company -- perfectly positioned for growth in Asian markets while offering new competition to Adobe and the other big players here in North America and Europe.

http://tinyurl.com/p68ck

When the acquisition is completed, Corel will provide the industry's broadest portfolio of digital media software ranging from photo sharing and image editing products to advanced digital imaging, video editing, and high-definition DVD creation and playback software. Customers and partners will now have access to a full breadth of popular, award-winning digital media brands including WinDVD®, WinDVD Creator, Ulead® Photo Impact®, Ulead®VideoStudio™, Ulead DVD Movie Factory®, and Corel® Paint Shop® Pro- all from a single, trusted source.

By acquiring InterVideo, Corel is delivering on its strategy to accelerate revenue and earnings growth by acquiring complementary companies and technologies that will benefit from Corel's global sales, marketing, and distribution capabilities. With a robust product line, strategic partnerships with leading OEM manufacturers, and an established presence in Asia Pacific and Europe, InterVideo will provide Corel with added critical mass to efficiently serve the growing consumer demand for digital media software. This acquisition is especially strategic for Corel given InterVideo's strength in Asian markets, including China, Taiwan and Japan- regions that Corel has targeted for expansion. InterVideo's development centers across China and Taiwan provide Corel with a solid base from which to broaden its footprint in these key regions.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

"Customers and partners will now have access to a full breadth of popular, award-winning digital media brands" and to hell with the prosumer products!

[Dr Mordrid]

Corel has two video editing/DVD authoring bundles they have sold for ages; Visual Creation Studio and Visual Creation Studio Pro. Both of these packages bundle the same editing software: Sony's MovieStudio + DVD, which is their VideoStudio. 'Normal' gets an image viewer akin to Uleads Photo Explorer 8.6 while 'Pro' gets PaintShop Pro, but they have the same editor, making their product differentiation minor at best. Another problem: Corel has to license MovieStudio + DVD, hurting their bottom line for those products.

My guess is that they will replace the Sony software, and the Pro bundles PainShop Pro, with Uleads much more integrated and far better differentiated offerings.

[Jerry Jones]

"Customers and partners will now have access to a full breadth of popular, award-winning digital media brands" and to hell with the prosumer products!

I disagree.

Corel is one of the few corporations that has a fully-functional office suite that includes WordPefect... just as professional as Microsoft Word.

Corel boasts two professional-level vector illustration applications, Draw and Designer.

Corel boasts PAINTER... a professional-level painting application here:

http://apps.corel.com/painterix/product/index.html

Corel boasts VENTURA... an application popular among professionals who publish long documents, including academic publications.

Corel has plenty of PRO credentials and I see enhancement in terms of marketing for Ulead's PRO products.

This is going to be great.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

I'm fully aware of Corel's offerings and I use WP, Draw! etc. very regularly, so you don't have to treat me as if I were stupid. My speculation was based on their release. Your speculation is more wishful thinking. It is all speculation, at this moment.

Incidentally, you cite Ventura as if it were a great software. When it was based on the GEM GUI, it was the best, but it never made a reliable transition to Windows. I used it professionally for many years, from pre-Xerox days but abandoned it with v. 5 after trying to use it for a year or so. It never cut the ice under Windows. The pro DTP for Windows was QuarkXpress until about 5 years ago, when InDesign took over as pro DTP market leader. I doubt whether Ventura has 1% of today's pro market (although I know someone who still runs the DOS/GEM version!). Even MS Publisher is used enormously professionally, although I would class it as prosumer.

Corel has a history of taking over ex-market leaders and never making it back again.

[Jerry Jones]

Nonsense, Brian.

I agree that pre-version 10 releases of VENTURA didn't make the transition to WINDOWS reliably, however, that is certainly not true of version 10 (the current version), which still enjoys an almost rabid following of people who earn their living doing long documents.

I believe the *REAL* reason for VENTURA's loss of market share was the inability of new users to understand VENTURA's unique concept of *TAGS* for paragraphs, pages, tables, characters, etc.

The *TAG* concept was just too complex and baffling for new users.

Had COREL put more emphasis on teaching and on helping new users to overcome the steep learning curve, VENTURA, in my view, would have a much bigger following today.

Unfortunately, I think SERIF's PagePlus now actually offers a better value because of its ability to speak the language of publishing, which is PostScript and PDF, which can both be natively edited in SERIF applications.

With COREL VENTURA, one can't import and edit PDFs. And it's still much more difficult to learn than SERIF's programs.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/

Serif's stuff is very good. Even better is that they offer free SE builds & full older builds or more recent previous full versions for ~$10, which sometimes come with a content CD for good measure.

Yes, it's legit. FreeSerifSoftware.com is run by Serif itself. Ideal for those not needing the 'latest & greatest' features or short on cash

Browse this site thoroughly, there are some real treats about

Combine this with OO2 and......

[cuddles]

Good link, Thanks